


war is a girl

by octomaidly (mizael)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Murder, Other, Post-Talon Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Repressed Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 21:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9289838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizael/pseuds/octomaidly
Summary: When Widowmaker looks at the apartment now, it is dusty and empty. The moths have eaten the bed cloths, the furniture is all covered in white sheets, and there are specks of brown dirt on the floor next to the stove.





	

There’s a spot that Amélie used to like when she visited Paris. It was an old building squished between two large streets, slightly off-kilter in its view of the Eiffel Tower. Gérard would call the landlady when they planned trips there in the summer, spending nights in the streets of Paris hand in hand with the dazzling lights all around them.

She would sit on the balcony with her legs swung over the armrest of a chair, watching news on her tablet while enjoying a glass of lemonade. Gérard would be in the other room, cooking, maybe, or going through mission reports on his visor. She would remember his steady breathing, the sizzling on the stove, the scent of fresh biscuits wafting out from the table inside that made her stomach rumble and growl for breakfast.

When Widowmaker looks at the apartment now, it is dusty and empty. The moths have eaten the bed cloths, the furniture is all covered in white sheets, and there are specks of brown dirt on the floor next to the stove.

She takes a moment to survey her surroundings as a foreigner would do, as a sniper would do: the balcony is a good perch for her rifle, but too open for her to set up there. If worse comes to worse, she can jump out of the bedroom window and land in the awning outside. The furniture will provide ample cover if a firefight broke out here.

Widowmaker takes a cannister of venom from her pouch and attaches it to the doorframe. If someone tried to sneak in, it would explode into deadly poison. Her flank was covered, for the most part.

She takes long strides across the room, hugging her rifle to her chest as she traverses the wood. She is no longer Amélie, and this room should be foreign to her, should be another space for her to set up for her next kill. But she shouldn’t have remembered this apartment in the first place. _Amélie knew where it was._ Widowmaker didn’t. Shouldn’t.

Her rifle unfolds as she sets up a tripod next to the window. In approximately ten minutes and twenty-four seconds, her target will exit the restaurant he dined in and be escorted to his car. In the twenty seconds it takes for him to walk from the entrance of the restaurant to the cover of his limo, Widowmaker will have to fire a round that pierces directly into his brain. Instant kill, and then she would have to move before they figured out where her perch was.

She drags the cloth-covered table from the kitchen over so she can lay on it and grip the stock of her rifle. Nine minutes and thirty-six seconds left.

Her visor makes a click and a hissing noise, releasing steam as it folds onto her face. Her vision blurs into red for a quick moment. She can see human figures walking around the restaurant and many more patrons dining there. Eight minutes and ten seconds.

The crosshairs on her rifle swing around for a bit as she adjusts her position. There is a spot between the awning and the car where he will be unprotected for those few precious seconds. Seven minutes.

Six. Five. Four—

_“—trois, deux, un!” Gérard shouts from inside the kitchen. There is a_ ding _that accompanies his countdown, and then Amélie is hit with a barraging scent of freshly-baked biscuits._

_“Gérard!” she says, laughing, swinging her legs off of the armrest of her chair and onto the floor. “J’ai faim, mon chèri. J'ai attendu trop longtemps.”_

_“Je n'ai pas faim, je mange juste pour le plaisir,” Gérard takes her hand in a kiss. “Mais je te ferais n'importe quoi.”_

_Amélie laughs, again, and stands up from her spot on the balcony. The table is decorated with a basket of biscuits and greek yogurt with fruit jam. Amélie feels her stomach rumble at the sight. Gérard was always the better cook._

_They sit in pleasant chatter with the sounds of their forks and knives scraping across ceramic plates. Gérard makes a small joke, and Amélie laughs. When he compliments her immediately afterward, she laughs again, though this time with the most pleasant of redness to her cheeks, her heart thudding in her ears. Ba-dump, ba-dump—_

“Widowmaker, do you have the perimeter?” Reaper’s voice crawls into her ears, and Widowmaker startles from her momentary lapse. The hands holding onto her rifle are shaking, her fingers clumsy. She briefly lets go of the gun and exhales.

Her heart doesn’t beat like that anymore.

“Oui,” she replies a second later, pushing the butt of the rifle against her shoulder and tilting her head just slightly into the scope again. Her crosshairs are refocused on the spot between the awning and the car. “I am set up.”

“Good,” Reaper rumbles through the fuzziness of her earbuds. “Target approaching in sixty seconds. Maintain radio silence until objective is complete.”

“Oui,” she says one last time, and then hears the line shut.

Her hands curl around the stock of the rifle, her fingers resting on the trigger.

Thirty. Twenty. Ten.

Widowmaker does not breathe in the moment, her already-slow heart calming until it almost stops beating. Talon made her into the perfect sniper, the perfect assassin. Amélie Lacroix does not exist any longer.

_She couldn’t feel anything as her hand wrapped around his neck, the other clutching a kitchen knife that Gérard used to use to separate dough with. Gérard, to the very end, asked her_ why, why _. She knew why—Talon told her to. Talon wanted her to. So, she did._

She remembers at the last second what the brown flecks of dirt near the stove were.

_Boom!_

“Objective complete, requesting pickup.”

“A helicopter will be in your area.”

Widowmaker sits up on the table and begins folding her rifle for portable carrying. She takes the table dragged from its former spot in the middle of the room and puts it back. She takes the venom mine attached the doorframe and sticks it back into her holster.

Widowmaker surveys the room one last time: the helicopter will have to pick her up from the front, so she needs to leave the window open. If someone came in at the last minute, she would still be able to jump down to the awning below.

The sound of a chopper reaches her ears, and Widowmaker walks over to the window to climb onto the ladder dropped. As her flight ascends higher into the air, Widowmaker catches a fleeting glance at the balcony and the building she used to love.

That was Gérard’s blood, splattered on the wooden floor, next to the stove, when the last vestige of Amélie Lacroix slipped away into nothingness.

**Author's Note:**

> the prompt i was given was "war is a girl" dfkjldf i honestly have no idea what i'm doing i'm so sorry
> 
> [find me on twitter!](https://twitter.com/octomaidly)


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